Page 98 - Speedhorse April 2019

PREPARED F
Industry newcomer Lee Jenkins sets his sights on success.
by Diane Rice
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OPPORTUNITY
Lee Jenkins isn’t one to sit around waiting for opportunity to fall into his lap. Instead, he sets short-term, achievable goals and then goes about fulfilling them.
His lifelong friend, Maurice Wideman of Bluffton, South Carolina, says the sky is the limit for Lee. “There aren’t any limitations
on him. He’s a very smart guy and he loves to research. He never took a test that I know of that he didn’t ace; he puts in the hard work and is open to trying new things.”
Among the new things Lee has tried in the past few years is picking the brains of industry icons such as Butch Wise, Russell Harris, Buddy and Patty Newsome, John Shaw, Sylvia Shaw Pitman and others. ”I guarantee he knows their life stories, from the first horse they bred and the first big race they won, before he goes to talk to them,” Maurice says.
Using the words of television personality Steve Harvey, Lee says, “‘When your opportunity comes, you have to be ready to receive it.’ I think we have many opportunities in the future, and we’ll be ready.”
HIS EARLY YEARS
Officially named Leephonso, Lee was born in 1982 in Beaufort, South Carolina — only because the hospital in his parents’ hometown of Hilton Head Island didn’t have a prenatal department — to Levi and Marsha Jenkins, sandwiched between an older brother, Kevin, and younger sister, Marasol.
Lee started riding his father’s Quarter Horses and Paints when he was just 4 or 5 years old.
He lived a dozen miles or more from Maurice, so every Sunday once they got old enough, he’d meet Maurice and his cousins on horseback midway between their homes.
Later in their youth, Lee and Maurice went into business together breaking Marsh Tacky horses — colonial Spanish horses native to South Carolina, and the state’s official heritage horse. “We’d bring horses to my mother’s house or to Lee’s father’s house and it took us about a month and a half to get them where they needed to be,” says Maurice. “We even trained them to shoot off of for fox hunting, which is big in this area.”
In 2000, Lee graduated from Hilton Head High School, where he’d fed his love for athletic competition by participating in basketball, football, track, baseball and wrestling. Four years later, he received his bachelor of science degree in business administration from Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.
THE NEXT STEPS
With school athletics behind him, he set about finding another outlet for his competitive nature. He found it in horses. “It was a perfect fit,” Lee says, “not necessarily from the standpoint of my athletic nature, but more from an intelligence and decision-making standpoint — trying to breed and own the best horses I could.”
He attended his first race in Elloree, South Carolina, in 2011. “I was just so intrigued by the beauty and power and ‘incredibleness’ of the horses, so I actually left the racetrack that day and went to see Corey Fields, a local racehorse breeder. I think it was just a week later that I owned my first racehorse,
an American Quarter Horse named Sundashers FloJo [Sundasher – Tys Shake, Special Shake].
“I had very little knowledge of pedigrees or the industry or even where I was going to race the horse,” Lee admits. “I remember riding that horse for about 35 days when I heard some guys at the local training track say they were going to send some horses to Hialeah. Once again, not knowing much about Hialeah or the industry, I said, ‘Well shucks, this horse is conditioned, she feels good.’ So we sent her to Hialeah!
“I’m so grateful for that experience because since then we’ve elevated our pedigree and our knowledge of the industry,” he adds.
PEDIGREE RESEARCH
The first sire Lee started researching was Wave Carver. Bent on improving his pedigrees as a breeder and forming relationships with those in the industry, he went to visit Steve Fisch DVM, at AVS Equine in Tallahassee, Florida — the closest veterinarian and stud farm with Wave Carver bloodlines.
“I’d read an article that said Wave Carver was in Florida, so soon after, I set up an appointment to see him,” Lee says. “If I remember correctly, I spent the week of my birthday in Tallahassee by myself because that’s how excited I was to go and see Wave Carver.
“Dr. Fisch was very accommodating and hospitable, and we discussed all sorts of things,
from pedigrees to bloodlines, nutrition to vet care,
and so on. He was really my introduction to the professionalism that the horse racing industry entails, and he was a very good representation of the industry.”
96 SPEEDHORSE, April 2019